


New York Shorts

by TygerTyger



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 6,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TygerTyger/pseuds/TygerTyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of mini stories set after The Angels Take Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Year

**Author's Note:**

> Basically a way to capture all the tiny ideas I had after seeing the episode.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her best shot at being with him, like she’s supposed to be.

“Goodbye.”

Amy was plunged into darkness, but she could still see the image of the Doctor’s face twisted in grief and desperation. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand to clear the image and the tears. He’d be okay; he’d have to be. She turned to take in her surroundings, her eyes slowly growing accustomed to the dark.

She looked up to see the top of the Chrysler building rise above the tops of the high buildings next to her. Still New York. She shivered as chill wind streaked up the street and penetrated her light clothing.

In her mind there was a seed of fear that had begun to sprout; it was threatening to grow out of control and paralyse her with terror so she moved faster, turning and searching frantically. Then she saw him and the fear withered to dust.

He was sitting in on a step, maybe thirty yards further up the street, head in hands. His shoulders were heaving with sobs, but he wasn’t making a sound. All her instincts were screaming at her to run to him, but all her body could muster was a weak stagger.

His head was still sunk when she finally reached him and she tried to say his name, to break the spell of despair about him, but she couldn’t make a sound. She reached a shaky hand out and dropped it on his head and he flinched in momentary shock before looking up. His face changed from surprise, to wonder, then relief and unrestrained joy. Amy sank to her knees in front of him as his arms reached out to pull her to him. She pressed her face to his neck, his familiar warmth making the pain of loss melt from her bones.

“You’re here,” he said, squeezing her tighter.

“Of course I am.” She kissed the curve of his neck. Her Rory. “Of course I am.”

 

After a while, they sat on the step, huddled together for warmth. “When are we?” she asked.

“It’s New Year’s eve. Any minute now it’s going to be nineteen forty.”

Amy kicked at the pavement in front of her for a bit. “Remember in Berlin, when Mels said the last time she—”

“Yup. And it’ll be thirty years. At least.”

“Rory—”

“We might not be able to actually… find her.”

“But we’ll try?”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Of course. But in the meantime, we wait.”

Amy laughed. “Well, we have plenty of practise.”

“That we do.”

There was a swell of sound from somewhere nearby, and firecrackers snapped and popped somewhere in the distance.  They looked at each other, smiling. “Happy New Year, Missus.”

Amy stroked his cheek. “Happy New Year, Rory.”


	2. Embassy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ponds need paperwork.

Every time someone came through the revolving doors of the embassy a frigid breeze came with them. Amy hugged herself and crossed her legs in an attempt to keep what remained of her body heat inside her body as she waited for Rory. It could have been worse, at least the embassy opened on New Year’s day. It wasn’t, Amy thought, very British of them, but she was glad of their lack of patriotic inconvenience in this instance.

Morning had broken, but the lobby was still dark and poorly lit by sconces. One by one, employees filed in to start a new day and a new year. The lift doors opened and Rory stepped out with a man wearing a dapper blue suit with a tie clip. They talked for a minute then the man motioned for him to take a seat, and then disappeared down a hallway.

Rory trotted over to Amy and sat in close next to her putting a warming arm around her. “Okay, so he believes we’re British now. He kept pointing at things getting me to name them. I think he finally gave in with the scone.” He tried to rub some warmth into her arm. “He’s going to sort out new passports for us now.”

“Just like that? No red tape?”

Rory shrugged. “So he says.”

Amy looked at him seriously. “Rory, are you sure this is the _British_ embassy?”


	3. Rehabilitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rory's good with bad patients.

Ben shifted in his wheelchair; damn thing kept making his ass fall asleep. It was supposed to be temporary, but after two infections he was healing slower than Christmas, and by the looks of things it was going to end up being permanent. Seemed like every ounce of luck he had vanished the day he enlisted.

First week in France his company got shelled, and two pounds of red-hot shrapnel had to be dug out of his thigh. It was the only action he saw, and after a month in hospital in merry old England they decided he was a lost cause as a soldier and shipped him home.

His sweetheart, Ellie, hung around for the grand total of two weeks before making some tearful excuse and leaving him, crippled and without prospect. It’d be just his luck if they needed to take his leg off too, like the doc said they probably would. He’d soon find out as it was almost time for rounds, and maybe if he whined enough, the doc would up his morphine dose.

It wasn’t his usual doc. This guy had fifty per cent less gut and ninety per cent more nose. He wasn’t wearing a white coat either, just a regular shirt. He crouched down next to the wheelchair, and before he could say anything, Ben started. “Where’s the other guy?”

“Doctor Spencer? He’s been transferred to St. Monica’s. I’m going to be taking over the rehabilitation clinic. I’m nurse Williams, but you can call me Rory if you like.”

“A nurse. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Don’t worry, we still have a doctor on hand for prescriptions.”

“It’s not that. I mean… you’re a man.”

Rory stopped and stared him down, all cool and business like. “In the war when you needed a field medic, he was a man and a nurse.”

Ben grumbled. “Yeah. Suppose. What about you? You a vet?”

Rory looked down at the dressing on Ben’s thigh and started to unwind it. “Yes. A long time ago now.”

“Last time the krauts acted up then?”

“Something like that.” He inspected the wound. “You’ve got some necrotic tissue here; what medication have you been taking?”

“Doc has me on morphine for the pain.”

“You’re going to need to be weaned off that; it’s not helping with the healing. And it has other… problems.”

Ben knitted his brow and stared at Rory but didn’t say anything. He’d let the prescribing doc decide about the Morphine.

“How does it feel when you put weight on it?” Rory asked, stretching Ben’s leg out straight.

“No offence, nurse, but you’ve seen my leg, right? Doc said it needs to heal up before I go walking on it.”

“Well he’s wrong about that. You need to be bearing weight on it or else you could end up losing it.”

“I’ve made my peace with that much already.”

“Well, you might have given up on it, but I’m not going to that easily.” He took some gauze from the cart next to him and started to wrap Ben’s wound up again. “You’re going to take a trip on the parallel bars now before I leave.”

Ben sat back in his wheelchair and crossed his arms. “Look. I know you’re just trying to help and all, but the doc said I needed rest to heal. And now you’re telling me I need to go walking around on half a thigh? Without morphine? I think I’ll stick with the doc.”

Rory put his hand on the wheelchair armrest. “The doc also told you that you were going to lose your leg. I’m telling you you’re not. What have you got to lose by trying my way?”

Ben stared at him. Bastard had a point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheers to clare009 for taking a look over American stuff.


	4. A Photograph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melody's got mail.

Her usual morning headache had all but passed so Melody stood in the centre of her spring bed. She tested the resistance under her feet. “Preparing for take-off,” she said under her breath as she bent her knees. “Three, two, one.” She looked up at the spot of mould on the ceiling. “Take off!”

She took a small bounce, followed by a deeper one and reached for the spot. She missed it again, but she was certain it was the closest she had got to touching it so far. She landed on the mat with cat-like ease.

There was a creak on the staircase and her heart thrummed. “Miss Melody!”

It was just Doctor Renfew. She blew out a breath and stood up, straightening her dress. He knocked on her door. “Come in!”

He stuck his head around and smiled that weary smile of his. “There’s mail for you; how do you like that?”

Melody furrowed her brow. Mail? That was a first. He handed it to her and she looked curiously at it. There was a stamp with a bird that had red markings over it: New York, New York.

“Well aren’t you going to open it?” he asked.

Melody smiled up at him and then tore it open. She slid out what was inside and stared at it. A photo of a red-haired lady with a little baby.

Renfew was thrilled. “Why that’s you, Miss Melody, when you first came to us. But who’s that lady with you?”

Melody shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“How curious,” he laughed his tortured laugh. “It’s a lovely photo anyway. I’ll get you a frame; I think I have one in the office.” He scuttled away to fetch the frame and Melody examined the photo again.

Her lips hitched into a tiny smile that displayed barely a fraction of the soaring joy in her heart. She knew who the lady was because she remembered her. And the man with the funny bow tie had said, “You should call her Mummy.”


	5. Try to See it my Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a freelance journalist has its ups and downs for Amy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is total self-indulgence on my part!

Rory heard the door unlock earlier than he had expected and got up from his paperwork to greet his wife. “You’re home early,” he said as Amy slipped her satchel from her shoulder and placed it down before working the buttons of her wool coat open.

“I was asked to leave.” She looked up, vaguely sheepish, vaguely defiant.

“What happened?” Rory said, and realised too late that he had failed to hide his disappointment.

“It wasn’t my fault.” She tossed her coat on the hook, picked her satchel up again and strode into the kitchen followed by Rory. Undoing the clasps on her bag, she glanced up at him again. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I just ran over your puppy.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” Amy pulled out her notebook and looked down at the sparse few words she had noted as she sat down in front of the typewriter.

“I thought they asked you to leave?” Rory said, surprised that she had anything to type up.

“They did.” She slipped her reading glasses on and loaded the paper. “But we need a new fridge, and it’s not going to pay for itself.”

“You’re going to make something up?”

“Yup.” 

He stood for a long moment as he watched her begin to type her article. “Your record’s in my bag,” she said without pausing her fingers at the keys.

He pulled the record out and was about to put it back with the rest when he noticed the handwritten scrawls on the front cover. His chest swelled and he looked back at his wife who was busy inventing a new fridge for them. “You got it signed.”

“’Course I did, stupid. It was the first thing I did.”

“Thank you,” he said and Amy turned in her seat to face him, beaming.

“Any time.” She paused and adjusted her reading glasses. “But just so you know, squeezing a journalist’s bottom—especially when she’s old enough to be your…” She blinked away the realisation. “He should have expected to get a slap.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and turned back to the typewriter. Rory stared at the side of her face as she concentrated, not quite sure what to say. Her fingers began to hit the keys again, harder than before. “John Lennon is a very naughty boy.”


	6. Rats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melody's on a mission.

An explorer’s life was not an easy one, even when resources were seemingly plentiful. Interacting with the local wildlife was by far the biggest challenge of the expedition; the rats didn’t take kindly to her setting up base in the middle of their well-worn path. They’d rather spend time nibbling holes to get through than go around; that was until she caught one in the act and skewered it with the metal rod she kept for protection. They got the message after that.

Finding food was never a problem when people called all sorts of perfectly edible things trash, but fluids were a different story. New York was big, and it was thirsty work searching for your mum when all you had was a memory of her face. Rainwater would be the obvious solution, if it only would actually rain. But the atmosphere stayed stubbornly dry.

Then one afternoon she hit the mother-load—a crate of soda casually sitting in the alleyway with no one around to claim it. She squirrelled it away amongst the cardboard layers of her expedition headquarters. Twenty-four bottles—she could get at least a couple of more months out of that. Hopefully it wouldn’t take that long.

Then the coughing started. She knew she was better equipped to fight of infection than ‘regular’ people, so at first she didn’t worry. But not worrying didn’t stop it getting worse; it made her sore and shivery, and so thirsty that she carried a soda bottle with her most days.

“Hey kid!” It was Rita Warts and her armfuls of bags. “Where’d you get that soda?” Melody clutched it to her chest. “Hope it wasn’t in the alleyway, ‘cause that wheezin’ you’re doin’—could be serious.”

Melody blinked at her. “What?”

“There’s vermin in the alleyway. Rats.”

She didn’t need to be told about the rats, she knew all about them. “So?”

“They carry disease.” Rita rubbed her chest with a fist. “Killed my cousin, Joe. Best take yourself to the hospital.”

Melody’s blood ran cold as she realised that Rita was most likely right. The rats had their slow cold revenge. There was no need to jeopardise her expedition by going to a hospital though, because she might be dying, but it was all right—she could fix that. It was easy really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I gave her Weil's disease. Sorry.


	7. Six Months Later...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeremy's late.

It was a Sunday evening like any other at the shelter. Most showed up to warm their bones with a hot meal and a bed for the night, some didn’t. Of the ones who didn’t, the lucky few had someone there to worry about their absence. And so Ben found himself worrying about Jeremy, who for the first time in almost a year hadn’t shown up for dinner.

Ben sat on his own with a chipped mug of steaming coffee and tried to pay the door no mind as it opened and closed with people passing through. He could almost see the bottom of the mug, and was about to call a halt to his watch, when he heard scuffling and shouting came from the entryway. Ignoring the stiffness in his leg, he rushed out to find Jeremy arguing with one of the security guards who was telling him to calm down.  Jeremy’s eyes were wild and his cart was missing.

Ben shuffled up to the guard. “Can I?” 

“Go right ahead.” The guard folded his arms and then took a couple of steps back.  

Ben moved out to the door and put his hands up. “Hey Jeremy, what’s up? Where’s your cart? Someone take it?”

Jeremy hugged himself and surrendered to his nervous tick of the head. “Nope. Left it.”

Jeremy never let anyone near his cart, never mind leave it behind anywhere. “Left it? What happened?”

Then Jeremy looked at him with a streak of wild terror that almost took Ben’s breath away. “C’mon inside. I’ll fix you a sandwich and we can talk about whatever it was once you’ve warmed up.”

Jeremy tried to nod but it just made his head twitch more; Ben led him through the entrance into the light of the shelter.


	8. The News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At some point they'd have to give up searching.

Rory lay awake. It was six months since the moon landing and they still had no luck in their search. They’d walked the streets and talked to the homeless, handing out flyers with quarters taped to them for phone calls. Most of the quarters would never make it to a phone booth, but it was worth a try. Anything and everything was worth trying, but the New Year came and went and Rory feared the worst—they’d never find their daughter.

Toddler, he thought, was the word that hurt the most. Imagining her so tiny and so vulnerable with no one who loved her around made his chest ache. Amy never lost her conviction that they would find her; she had boundless energy for the task. Rory dreaded the day when he’d need to stop her.

At 2am the phone rang.

“Is that Rory? Nurse Williams?”

“Yes.” After hearing himself croak, he cleared his throat.

“This is Ben Hudson, remember from the rehab clinic twenty-something years back? We met again a couple of weeks ago when you and Mrs Williams called by the shelter?”

Rory’s chest tightened. “Yes, Ben, of course. How are you?”

“I’m okay, but I need to tell you something. One of the boys was out on a hundred and thirteenth tonight, and he saw a little girl.”

Rory’s jaw dropped, and he wasn’t sure if his heart was still beating. “What did she look like?”

“About ten and white,” he said.

Rory picked up the phone and dragged it across to the bed to shake Amy awake. “Where exactly, Ben?” Rory was amazed that he could even speak, let alone form coherent sentences.

“A hundred and thirteenth and Broadway, a side alley there.”

Amy rubbed her eyes and looked at him, questioning for a moment; when she saw the phone she sat bolt upright.

“Okay, thanks Ben. We’re going to head straight over and see if it might be her.” Amy grabbed his arm and stared at him wide-eyed.

“Wait,” Ben said, still on the line. “There was one other thing, and it could just be that Jeremy has finally flipped, but he said that there was a crazy golden light coming out of her hands before he took off. Ha.”

Rory couldn’t finish the conversation. He simply hung up the phone. “Amy. It’s her.”


	9. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A New York alleyway is probably not the safest place for a toddler.

Melody looked down at her hands, they were darker than before… and smaller and a little bit chubby. Oh. She took a deep breath; all of her pain was gone and she felt, well, wonderful. It was as though she hadn’t been fully alive until this moment, like all of her blood was finally flowing in the right direction and at the right pace. Wait. She stuck her fingers in her ears and held her breath. Two lubs, two dubs, two— So it was true!

She laughed and then immediately tried to slap a hand over her mouth, but missed. My god, she sounded like a… toddler. She took a quick look down over herself; her previously knee-length dress was pooling around her feet. Oh no, this wasn’t good.

There was movement in the trashcans behind her, and she turned around as well as she could without toppling. A mangy looking dog stalked out; he had been begging from her for days and she’d given him the odd scrap of food, but now he was looking at her as though she were meat.

Unable to get a grip of the hem of her dress, she waded in it as quickly as her little bare feet could take her and squeezed down behind the dumpster. She could hear the dog sniff and growl underneath it. She knew that if he tried hard enough he’d be able to move the dumpster so she tried to stay quiet in the hope he’d go away.

The dumpster jerked as the dog tried to push his way in, and then something all-consuming and primal took over her body; she started to bawl long heaving cries. She had no control; no rational thought could stop it. She didn’t know if it or the dog was more terrifying. But either way, the noise was spurring the dog on as he threw his body full force into the gap between the dumpster and the wall, inching it wider each time.

Suddenly the dumpster was heaved back all at once and the dog was gone. There was a man standing over her and then kneeling down in front of her. She blinked to shed the tears that were impairing her vision as her sobs quietened. Over the man’s shoulder, haloed by the streetlight, she saw a vision. She reached for it, for her, and made the only sound her new mouth produce. “Mum.”


	10. After the Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They just needed time.

Amy dried the cups and put them in the dresser. Her head was filled with plans and her heart with longing, but she needed to give them space. Mum had been trusted instantly and implicitly, but Dad… Amy swiped the tear with her thumb before it had the chance to go anywhere. It would be all right though, she knew it. She’d seen it years earlier and years later. Melody would be Daddy’s girl; they just needed time. So she wiped the counter tops and straightened the jars and containers until she could wait no longer.

There wasn’t a sound from the living room as she pressed her palm to the door to open it softly. The low light of the table lamp made the room glow gold and the dance of bright flames in the hearth was lively and silent. Rory reclined on the sofa with Melody resting on his chest, asleep.

He carefully lifted his cheek from its position against her soft curls and looked up at Amy, tearful and happy. Amy sat in close next to them and kissed her husband. She looked down at her sleeping daughter, tiny mouth, almost lost between chubby little cheeks, puffing shallow breaths into Rory’s shoulder. Eyes rimmed with a half-moon of dark lashes closed in gentle surrender. “Should we carry her to bed?”

Her tiny back rose and fell in time with her breaths and Rory placed a protective palm over it. “Can’t we wait? Just another little while?” He put his lips to the top of the little girl’s head and closed his eyes, breathing her in. Amy moved closer and kissed each of their cheeks in turn. “Of course.” 

They’d waited almost forty years for this. Bed could wait for them now.


	11. The Art of Remembering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some day soon, her memories will be all she has.

She’d watched the film with Rory in the 21st century and loved it. She remembered that it was first thing one morning in August 1974, but not the exact date. It didn’t matter, though. If she had to go down there every day for the entire month, she was going to be there with Melody to witness it. It only took seven days in the end.

They emerged from the subway and strolled the couple of blocks to the near-finished towers, just as they had each day previously. But this morning when she looked up—the wire. She hoisted Melody onto her hip and kissed her cheek in excitement. “It’s today!”

Melody clapped her hands.

Soon after seven, the dancer appeared. “Melody, look!”

Melody pressed her warm cheek to Amy’s and followed the line of her mother’s arm pointing out the tiny black figure stepping tentatively into the space between the towers. “I see him, Mummy.” Amy squeezed her daughter and they watched, mesmerised, as he made his way out to the furthest point between the two buildings.

A crowd had started to gather around them, and someone said. “You should get the kid out of here. What if he falls?”

“He won’t fall,” Amy said with certainty, not moving her eyes from the spectacle high above their heads.

The man lay down on the wire, his outline serene as though he were floating. Melody’s fingers danced at Amy’s neck as she gazed up, bewitched.

“When people and things are gone they still live on, but only in our memories,” Amy said. “So it’s important that we remember them well, remember them at their best. I want you to remember today, Melody.”

Melody turned away from the scene above to nuzzle Amy’s cheek with her nose. Her breath was warm and she placed a soft kiss next to her mother’s ear. Amy kept her eyes fixed on the wire walker, more out of necessity than desire now as her eyes prickled with unsheddable tears. If she wasn’t sure before, she was certain now—Melody would remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Petit


	12. Baseball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melody is good at keeping secrets.

She stepped onto the drain grate and adjusted her cap, eyeing Charlie as he screwed the ball into his mitt; he had a look in his eye like he had something to prove. He was always the first to point out how much smaller she was than the rest of the seven-year-olds on the block, and now he’d just witnessed her knock the ball out of the scrapyard five times in a row and he’d be damned if he was going to be the sixth boy to scale the fence and fetch it.

She knew she was smaller; she didn’t need to be told. Her mum and dad explained that it was because she was different. She was special—part Time Lord. That was cooler than being tall any day. But she was under strict orders to tell no one, so Charlie would have to get his comeuppance by means of sporting humiliation.

She tapped her bat on the grate for luck then took a steady stance. Charlie spat, and then readied himself to throw. His left shoulder twitched—it was going to be a low one again, so she calculated the precise angle of impact to give it the best distance. He drew his arm back and gave it all he was worth. All he was worth would not be enough.

The silence was broken by the sweet woody sound of perfect contact between bat and ball. They watched it soar out over the rooftops, and Melody didn’t bother trying to hide how pleased she was with herself. Her pride was short lived though, as a crash of glass sounded from the street. There was silence for a long moment as the children stood and listened, then the back door of the deli burst open and a red-faced butcher—more belly than man—barrelled out in their direction, baseball in hand.

The other children tore off in various directions, desperately climbing over walls and squeezing through holes in fences to get away, but Melody stood her ground. She wanted her ball back. She had her sincerest apology ready to go, but the man didn’t give her the chance to use it before he yanked her roughly by the elbow.

She dropped her bat. He held the ball in front of her face with his chubby hand. “Was this you?”

She struggled to get free but he had a tight grip. “Let me go.”

“Who do you think you are, hitting balls in the middle of the neighbourhood?”

She tried to kick him into letting her go but he lifted her by the arm, sending a bolt of pain up to her neck and down to her wrist. “Who’d you steal the ball and bat from, huh?”

“I didn’t steal anything; my dad gave them to me.” She whined in pain as he squeezed her arm harder and boomed with laughter.

“Yes, I did,” came the steady voice of her dad as he came through a gap in the fence. “Let her go, please.”

But the ape didn’t let go; he swung her about a bit. “This yours?”

“Yes _she_ is, now let her go before I do something we’ll both regret.”

The butcher laughed again. “I’d like to see you try, old man.” He dropped Melody and she fell to the ground and held her elbow. “Here, take your half-breed,” he said.

Melody’s breath stopped in her chest. She had been good; she hadn’t told anyone, but somehow he had found out. Her dad looked furious and tears welled in her eyes. He marched up to the butcher and without any further warning, thumped him in the jaw. The fat rippled out from the point of impact and the man fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Out cold.

Melody’s lip wobbled as her dad turned to her. “I didn’t tell him, Dad, honest. I didn’t tell anyone.”

Her dad’s shoulders slackened and his face softened as he crouched down to her and put his arms out. “I know you didn’t. Come here.” She climbed into his arms and he kissed her elbow. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and smiled as he picked her up and started to carry her away on his hip. “Wait, Dad. My ball and bat.”

“Ball and bat, right.” He turned around, swiped them up from the ground and handed them to her.

She took a long look at the heap of man over her dad’s shoulder as he carried her away. “Dad, will you teach me how to do that to someone?”

“Definitely… if you promise to use it only as a last resort.”

She hugged him and kissed his cheek. Her dad was the best. “Promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be coming back to these in December after NaNoWriMo


	13. Terminal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time's slow hand

Amy was glad she hadn’t seen her own name on their headstone; she liked not knowing who would go first. She hoped, like she assumed most people did, that it would be her. Most people didn’t know what it was like to be the one left behind by death. She did, and she’d had her fill of it, so she hoped that this time she might be spared it. She could live without him, but she really didn’t want to.

Time was neither cruel nor kind as it marched on towards his eighty-second birthday, but before he could even reach it, the deal was already done. That day, after the diagnosis, he had stroked the tears from her cheek and smiled, “Life is terminal, Amy. We knew this was coming.” She wanted to beg him not to leave her, but it would be unfair to have him make a promise he couldn’t keep, so she buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him instead.

Some months later, she pushed the door to his former study and current bedroom open and let Melody walk in ahead of her with the cake slice and candle. “Happy birthday, Daddy.”

Rory adjusted the tube at his nose with a shaky hand and moved to sit up. Amy strode over and caught him under the arms. “Let me, you daft old fool.” He gave her a withering look as she propped his pillows so he could sit and then kissed him into smiling. She settled in next to him on the bed as Melody put the cake down on the adjacent dresser and climbed up on his other side. She fetched the plate again.

“Help Daddy blow out the candle, Melody,” Amy said. Melody loved blowing out birthday candles, almost as much as she loved being seven. Fifteen years in a row now. Someday soon she’d want an eighth birthday. Amy shut her eyes; today wasn’t for such thoughts.

Melody puffed out the candle. “Want some cake, Daddy?”

Rory shook his head; the doctor had told him not to take solid food.

“Here,” Amy said, reaching across to take a small piece of the chocolate icing from the top. “A taste won’t hurt.” She put the tip of her finger into his mouth for him to taste his cake, and he sighed happily. “Thank you,” Amy said, “we baked it ourselves. Didn’t we, Melody?”

“Yup.” Melody set to work eating the cake and Amy put her head next to Rory’s, stroking his cheek and looking into his eyes. He always had such beautiful eyes, and even now they were beautiful, filled with love.

“Done!” Melody said, with a mouth still full of cake, and slid the plate back over to the dresser as she chewed and swallowed.

She settled in next to Rory and he turned his head to look down at her as she started to relay the story of baking the cake. He stroked her little arm with his fingertips and listened about the dropped egg and the vanishing chocolate.

Amy smiled. Rory was right. Life was terminal, and she wasn’t going to waste a moment.


	14. Time to Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a life filled with hard decisions, the last one proves to be the hardest of all.

Melody watched as her mum washed her face for the third time in a row. She was trying to pretend that she wasn’t crying. Her mum had never hidden her tears from her before. Melody’s stomach flipped at the unknown implications, and her mum finally dried her face, burying it in the towel.

“I didn’t see you standing there,” she said with red-rimmed eyes.

Last week was Melody’s eighth birthday. Since her Dad died, staying seven didn’t seem right anymore. Her mum brought her out for dinner in a proper restaurant and for gelato afterward, all the time wearing a painted smile.

“What’s wrong, Mum?” Melody asked, and her mum put the towel down.

“Come down to the kitchen and we’ll have a talk over a cuppa.”

 

Melody stared into her empty teacup, unable to raise her gaze to her mother on the other side of the table. “When’s Anthony coming?”

“Saturday,” her mum said simply.

Melody hadn’t seen her younger brother in almost a year. He’d moved to Texas go to university and ended up staying when he got a job. They had been seven together for a year, but he just kept growing up, and eventually left her behind. Now he was coming back to take her away from the only place she had ever known as home.

“Will I be going to live with him and Angela?” Melody looked up at last.

Her mum took her hand across the table. “No, love. You don’t belong with them.”

“I belong with you.”

Melody’s mother’s eyes welled with tears again, and thankfully this time she didn’t try to disguise it. “Yes you do. And you will be with me, but not here. Not any more.”

Melody blinked as she searched for some sense in her mother’s words. “But you’re sending me away. That’s what you said.”

“Remember how I told you that Dad and I are not from here?”

“You’re from the UK.”

“Yes. But that’s not all I meant. This is not _when_ we’re from. This is not when you’re from either. You were, or will be, born in hundreds of years’ time. You were brought back through time.”

Melody could feel her jaw slacken. It felt as though a particular jigsaw piece was slotting into place in her memory. She had always assumed that the things she recalled from babyhood had been odd due to her being so little, but no. She had been remembering correctly all along. The pod, the bright lights, the funny man, and the blue box. She had so many questions for her mother, but her thoughts were interrupted before she could pose any of them.

“Your Dad and I, we were born in 1989. Eight years ago.”

Melody’s gaze snapped back to her mother. “You’re sending me to be with you and Dad as kids.”

Her mum nodded. “The best place for you is with me, and with your Dad.”

“But you won’t know who I am.”

“No we won’t. And you must never tell us.”

Melody could feel her lip start to quiver so she bit it until it stopped. “Then how can you know it’s the best place for me?”

Her mother reached out and cupped her cheek. “Because, darling, I remember.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally finishing out the series. Sorry for ending with such angst.


End file.
